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Societe du Rouge
Société du Rouge, or The Red Society, is a loose affiliation of chromatophiles who revere the color red. Of its organizational structure and mission, the group says it is “decentralized, decanted, (and somewhat deterritorialized).” The main elaboration of its ethos can be found in the Red Book, a running set of mimetic pseudo-tenets maintained by several scribes. Principles Decentralization Société du Rouge does not have a committee or headquarters, but it does have several official scribes who routinely update the Red Book with suggestions from the general public. The Red Book’s signatories constitute the semi-official list of the group’s members, although one does not have to have signed the Red Book to participate in the society’s events (or enjoy the color red). This merely guarantees an invitation to some of the Red Events, which invitations are always sealed with pneuma-red, to the consternation of mail handlers. Decantation The Red Book is not so much a list of tenets, as may be expected from a more orthodox group, as it is a list of images that are bodied forth as intuitive, inspired, logical, or aesthetic impulses along a chain of meaning. The visual metaphor for this progression of ideas, which are intended to elucidate the nature of the color red, is the process of decanting. In the words of Jillian Rhizoma, a Red Book scribe, “decanting separates immiscible liquids, sure, but there are many ways to do this that are not decanting. Decanting is lyrical. It flows melodically from one vessel to the other, just as red flows as a sort of poetic transmission from one person or object to another. Decanting is a ritualistic process; we have to wait for the sediment to settle before we can pour. Understanding what we want out of red, what we love about red, takes time; it cannot be sped up, and that is the essence of ritual. Also, decanting is imperfect. Some unred impurity will always squirm through the sieve, so to speak, and that impurity is always carried through by language. But through the jagged rocks something really red flows. Red is an experience that must be decanted in language and in life.” What is decanted is the pharmakon, the basic unit of writing in the Red Book. A pharmakon is no more than a paragraph in length and tends to represent an image relating to red rather than an explanation of what makes it red (in surface or in spirit), although more explicatory pharmakons are rather rife throughout the book. A pharmakon is used to denote a unit of red-experience, a definition whose implications were heavily disputed during the Scarlet Schism. The decision to “decant,” or rather to adopt a methodology in the writing of the Red Book inspired by decantation, was inspired by the philosopher Roland de la Homination, whose pedagogical philosophy involves chaining together a long series of images relating to the subject at hand so as to “soften the fatality of language.” Because red is a “purely phenomenological experience, anything linguistic that condenses around it will only serve to mystify, and inflate the topic grotesquely” (Lacara Struycken, Red Book scribe). The use of decantation to avoid “killing” red ironically led to a virulent overproliferation of images that had nothing to do with the color, an untenable state of affairs that eventually caused the Scarlet Schism. Deterritorialization Deterritorialization is the most controversial aspect of the society’s mission. As conceived by the scribes who first injected the idea into the Red Book, it is inseparable from the idea of “immanence,” which red, or at least a red colorspace, is supposed to both symbolize and phenomenologically trigger. As an ambient color, red saturates, and as an intentional structure it has the tendency to wash out its objects. In this sense, it can be described as a totalizing force, albeit one that operates through immanence rather than violence. Contrast this with blue, the color employed by most religions as an emissary of spirituality, the gods, the sky -- the color of transcendence. Outside is blue; inside is red. Transcendence is a dualistic impulse, a longing to go from telluric red to cosmic blue. Immanence is a single-substance plane whose substance is red; red embeds and immerses, denying transcendence as a true distinction. There is only the red plane, a monolithic resonance of red that refers to nothing outside of itself. The blue of the sky does refer. It is created from atmospheric particles that refract the black of space into the blue we see from earth. Blue refers to black; red refers only to itself. When asked about red’s relationship to deterritorialization, the only comment Rhizoma made was, “deterritorialized red is Red, and absolutely deterritorialized Red is RED.” When asked if she would prefer a world with red, Red, or RED, Rhizoma responded, “I have no preference, but there is an inevitable going-towards RED, red being a productive force that only wants more red. Sooner or later we’ll see that everything’s actually red, meaning it’s RED.” Some argue that the group attribution bias has caused red to be unnecessarily pigeonholed into a metaphysically impoverished set of possibilities. “Just because one of its manifestations, a particular kind of ‘immersive’ red, has curried a lot of favor among the more snobbish of the chromatorati, doesn’t mean there aren’t other types of red that carry or symbolize other meanings,” Struycken has said. “What about the red of theater curtains? The red of roses? Lipstick-red? Those types of red belong to the world of appearances. They secrete seductions, not some bullsh*t metaphysical exoskeleton that protects nothing but the degenerate mind of a craven sophist. And even if this so-called ‘plane of immanence’ exists or will some day exist, who says it’s red?” The backlash from certain scribes and members of the society resulted in the partial decodification of deterritorialization-as-a-mission-statement using a diplomatic pair of parentheses. Red Events Red Events reflect the society’s three organizational values. The events are organizationally decentralized (organized in an ad hoc manner by whoever happens to feel so inclined, and in no particularly predictable location in the Manor), teleologically deterritorialized (see Red Book pharmakon #8), and by and large aesthetically decanted (events tend to be immersive/mimetic/sensual, rather than intellectual/academic/diegetic). Immanent Immersions The society’s most frequent and well-attended events are called Immanent Immersions. These take place in Manor spaces that have been installed, floor to ceiling and back again, with red lighting. Each Immanent Immersion uses a unique red or combination of reds. Occasionally, adjacent or complementary colors like magenta or blue are also used. The primary color produced by any given Immersion is recorded by any artist with a track record of excellent color differentiation. The task is made rather simple by the fact that the spaces used for Immersions are stripped of architectural cues that would otherwise give attendees the ability to perceive depth, shadows, shapes, and other features typical of any environment, so assaying a color is simply a question of seeing if the palette merges into its environment, or throws it into relief. These colors are then named after the Immersion whence they came (for example, Immanent Red #12) and are documented in an appendix of the Red Book. Immanent Immersions have been variously described as “intensely religious,” “disquietingly alien” and “like entering a post-human church.” Perhaps the most celebrated description comes from the Lady Cathexis, herself an ardent proponent (and symbol) of red: “I wanted to submit to it. And I did.” Other Events TO DO Controversy The society has courted controversy by claiming credit for certain events that were not initially designated as Red Events, prompting the Majordomo to call the society “a bunch of no-account color terrorists who will stop at nothing to assimilate any beating heart until it has devoured the Manor whole,” a remark that prefigured the metaphysical concerns of the Scarlet Schism. But the real motive behind the tendency to designate certain events as Red was “simply to extend the philosophy of the pharmakons into the spatio-temporal dimension.” Since this minor confrontation with the Majordomo (unacknowledged by either party to this day, despite epistolary proof), the society has stopped explicitly claiming credit for certain events whose main motif was not red, assuming the softer stance of correlating unofficially “red” events with the society’s ethos, rather than claiming to be their cause. Known Members # The Lady Cathexis # Jillian Rhizoma (scribe) # Lacara Struycken (scribe) The Scarlet Schism Arguments for the Red Purists Arguments for the Red Rhizomaticists